The moment that everyone was waiting for has finally arrived: On Thursday, March 9th, Gabriel-Nadeau Dubois, the celebrated student leader from 2012, announced that he will be joining Quebec solidaire. He will be the candidate for the party in the riding of Gouin and also desires to become the male spokesperson for the party. He said he wants to get rid of the "political class" that has governed for 30 years and has "betrayed Quebec".

It has recently come to light that Quebec police have been spying on journalists. At least six different journalists have had their phone calls and text messages monitored for years, in addition to their locations being tracked by GPS. This comes immediately on the heels of police seizing Journal de Montreal reporter Michael Nguyen's computer. These events have shocked many people and are just another example of how our democratic rights are being trampled on in Canada.

Bombardier’s $1 billion bailout package from the Quebec government has been finalized. The Province now holds 49.5% of shares in the company’s C Series jets. The Bombardier family, however, is retaining their stronghold over the business by refusing to dismantle its dual class share structure – a system designed to give Bombardier family members decisive control over all company affairs. Bombardier is also negotiating a bailout deal with the federal government. In the context of a struggling economy, this corporate welfare will have significant implications for Canadian workers.

The Quebec solidaire congress held on the weekend of May 28-29th marked the 10 year anniversary for the left-wing party in Quebec. After decades of domination by the Liberals and the Parti Quebecois (PQ), the founding of Quebec solidaire (QS) in 2006 generated a lot of enthusiasm as youth and workers were excited to break the hegemony of the two main bourgeois parties. What is the future for QS? How can we defeat the bosses' parties?

Following a blitz of negotiations just before the holidays, workers received what seemed to be good news. On December 19th the leaders of the Common Front (representing more than 400,000 public sector employees) announced that they had forced the government to back down and had reached an agreement. CSN president Jacques Létourneau stated that they had “stopped the impoverishment of public sector workers and had ended the lag in salaries.” Many workers have now returned to work after the holidays with the unpleasant news that the proposed deal is not all that it is claimed to be.

On Wednesday December 9th, over 400,000 public sector workers organized in the Common Front staged a massive 24-hour strike. All over the province, public buildings were shut down by picketers and mass demonstrations were held. Jacques Letourneau, the president of the CSN called this the biggest public sector strike since the revolutionary general strike of 1972. He stated that “There were 210,000 on strike at the same time then and today there are more than 400,000.” The working class is flexing its muscles in Quebec, posing a real challenge to the austerity agenda of the Couillard government.

The Quebec government will bail out Bombardier. This could not have come at a more insulting time for the Quebec teachers and public sector servants. While the provincial Liberal government pushes ahead with a program of cuts and austerity, it has no qualms in generously providing a failing company like Bombardier with what can be rightly described as “corporate welfare”. Furthermore, as if that was not offensive enough, the Quebec Liberals are asking the federal government to match their handout to Bombardier with another of its own.

The long awaited public sector strike in Quebec has begun. From October 26th – 29th, 400,000 public sector workers in Quebec staged strikes to protest against the austerity measures of the provincial Liberal government.

This past week in Quebec has been a large demonstration of force by the working class in the province. This culminated at the end of the week with 150,000 public sector workers demonstrating in downtown Montreal.

The former premier of Quebec and Parti Québécois leader Jacques Parizeau passed away on June 1, 2015. People across the political spectrum have spent considerable efforts waxing political and nostalgic about the last “great statesman”.